


Candy Canes

by SociallyAwkwardFox (Maze_Runner_Fae)



Series: 25 Days of Sterekmas [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Candy Canes, Christmas Fluff, Christmas traditions, Claudia Stilinski Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-27 23:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2711168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maze_Runner_Fae/pseuds/SociallyAwkwardFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finally decides it's time to bring back his mother's holiday tradition. The pack could really use it after the year they've had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candy Canes

Christmas had always been Stiles’s favorite holiday of the year. Don’t get the wrong idea. Stiles loved getting to dress up on Halloween, spending all day eating his weight in food on Thanksgiving, and watching the Ball drop on New Year’s but Christmas would always be his favorite. Not because he loved receiving gifts like most people thought, but because it had been his mom’s favorite holiday.

Every year she would take Stiles out with her to go Christmas shopping and they would end up gorging themselves on various Christmas treats before coming home to a real Christmas tree already in the living room. John Stilinski would come out of the kitchen with two mugs of hot chocolate in his hands and kiss his two favorite people in the world. The three would spend the rest of the night decorating the Christmas tree while they sang along to whatever Christmas music was playing on the radio. Over the next few weeks Claudia and Stiles would put up more decorations and bake cookies that they would end up taking to the Sheriff’s department during John’s lunchtime.

Stiles loved all of that but his favorite thing about Christmas was the candy canes. From the first of December to Christmas Claudia would leave out a candy cane for her son to find at some point in the day. Some days she left the candy cane in plain sight for her son to find, on other days Stiles would have to use his investigative skills to figure out where the sugary treat was hiding. He would always grin proudly upon finding it and then rush to his mother and father to show them how good of a detective he was.

After Claudia’s death, Stiles spent several years actively avoiding any aisle that had candy canes in it so he wouldn’t be reminded of the hole in his heart. It wasn’t until his senior year of high school Stiles decided to pick back up the tradition his mother had left behind for him. The pack had had a rough couple of years and after the last debacle (witches were bitches man) Stiles thought the pack could use some cheering up. Christmas time was supposed to be full of happiness and warmth not a sense of impending doom. It wasn’t until Stiles was standing in the checkout line with a basket full of various types of candy canes, that he realized what he had done.

Scott, Allison, and Isaac would probably appreciate the gesture. Erica would mock him at first but she’d probably end up thanking him later with the latest Batman comic. Lydia would act above it all but would become intrigued once he started to hide them from her. Boyd would remain as stoic as ever and Jackson would act like a jackass the whole time but would most likely find and eat every damn one. Derek… Stiles had absolutely no idea how Derek would react.

Things between Derek and Stiles weren’t bad per say. The two got along a lot better now that Derek wasn’t threaten to rip Stiles throat out and shoving him into walls all the time. Sometimes the two would end up on stake out missions together or they would spend all night researching together, but Stiles still wasn’t sure that Derek actually liked him. Tolerated was the verb Stiles would use. It wasn’t that Derek was still closed off and mysterious, on the contrary, Derek had started to open up more once the werewolves of Beacon Hills united together and became a cohesive pack. The reason Stiles wasn’t sure about Derek was because Derek always acted so… polite around Stiles. With the others Derek was friendly, but with Stiles it was like Derek was toeing some sort of line or walking on eggshells.

None of that mattered now. Stiles was going to bring Christmas joy to every member of the pack whether they liked it or not and he would do it one damn candy cane at a time. A goal was set and there was no way Stiles was going to back out now. It’s not the Stilinski way after all.

* * *

 

When the pack showed up for their weekly meeting on Saturday afternoon, most of the pack members were in various stages of eating their most recently found candy cane. Somehow Stiles had managed to avoid being found out throughout the week, despite the fact six of his eight pack mates were werewolves. Allison had almost caught him slipping a candy cane into her quiver one day but he had managed to talk his way out of it. He still doesn’t really know how he did it.

“Am I the only one who didn’t know they made bubble gum flavoured candy canes?” Erica pulled the bright pink candy cane out of her mouth to look at it then took a huge bite out of it. “It’s not as nasty as I thought it would be.”

“You got bubble gum! I want to try.”

“Try it and I’ll break your fingers Lahey.”

Lydia rolled her eyes at the two bickering werewolves. “I just want to know who’s leaving the candy canes. It’s kind of suspicious that it started up out of the blue like that.”

“I think it’s sweet.” Allison curled further into Scott as she looked fondly at the candy cane in her hand. “Someone’s just trying to spread some Christmas spirit around. It’s a nice gesture.”

“Until whoever is doing this decides to attack us. This could be a way of figuring out what our vulnerabilities are. It also takes us off our guard.”

“Don’t be silly. Nothing evil is doing this.”

“What if it’s like those Pagan gods from that episode of Supernatural?” Scott had a serious expression on his face. “I don’t want to stake an old couple with Christmas tree branches.”

“What do you think Stiles? No one bad is doing this right?”

Stiles shifted nervously in his seat but made sure to plaster on a mega-watt smile so the others wouldn’t notice. “Anything leaving around holiday candy can’t be that bad, unless they’re trying to fatten us up for some reason. That probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Although, I don’t know why you would target a bunch of werewolves if you were trying to fatten people up so you could eat them.”

“See! It’s not anything bad. It’s just someone being nice.”

“I’m still going to do some research.” Lydia had a dubious expression on her face and she obviously wasn’t about to let this one go. “I don’t want this to be another disaster. Do I have to remind everyone what happened the last time we were too complacent. Stiles was in the hospital for a month and a half.”

“If you want to do research than go ahead. I think it’s sweet.”

“I guess we’ll see who’s right in the end.”

“I guess we will.”

* * *

 

By the time the next pack meeting rolled around, Stiles was still acting as the elusive candy cane deliverer and Lydia hadn’t been able to find anything in her research that matched what was going on. Derek had been strangely quiet most of the week and Stiles was beginning to think he must have done something wrong by including Derek. Maybe hiding candy canes for the big, bad alpha was a bad move. A bad, bad move. That day’s pack meeting only severed to make Stiles surer of this fact, especially when Derek asked him to stay behind. The others thought nothing of it since Derek always went to Stiles with research questions but Stiles felt a sense of impending doom.

As soon as the door clicked shut Derek moved to sit down on one end of the couch and motioned for Stiles to sit on the other end. Slowly Stiles moved away from the only escape route he would have and took the seat he had been offered. For several minutes the two sat in silent, Stiles fidgeted nervously with the hem of his shirt while Derek watched him closely. Derek obviously wasn’t going to start the conversation but Stiles didn’t want to open his mouth out of fear that word vomit would immediately spill out of it.

“So… Did you want something? Is there some sort of monster running around that you haven’t told everyone else about yet?”

“No.”

“Alright right then.” Stiles opened and closed his mouth a couple of times then looked down at his hands so he could avoid looking at Derek. “What was it that you wanted? I don’t remember doing anything wrong but you know me. I’m-”

“You know what I want to talk to you about.”

“Well…”

“Why haven’t you told everyone you’re the one leaving the candy canes around for them to find?”

Stiles looked up so fast he almost got whiplash from the movement. “What?”

“I know you’re the one leaving them for the pack to find. Why didn’t you just tell them that last week?”

“I don’t know. I kind of thought they would figure it out for themselves so I wouldn’t have to then everyone was talking about it at the pack meeting and I don’t know. I didn’t want to ruin it for them I guess.”

“Lydia thinks it’s someone trying to trick us.”

“She has a right to be a little paranoid after what Peter did to her.”

“That still don’t explain why you haven’t told them you’re the one doing it.”

Stiles let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I know that when I tell them they’re going to want to know why I did it and I’m not sure I can tell them without breaking down like a two year old. I mean this year was the first time in ten years I’ve walked down the Christmas aisle in a grocery store. It was kind of a big deal for me and I didn’t even notice until I had already done it.”

“For the longest time I would always feel like throwing up if I smelled peppermint. My mom would wear peppermint perfume during the holidays because she thought it was festive and Peter couldn’t stand the smell.”

“I get the feeling I would have liked your mom.”

“Probably. She enjoyed telling embarrassing stories about me to anyone who would listen and god my sisters. If you had ever met them I would have had to learn to sleep with my eyes open.”

“They sound wonderful.”

“They were.”

The two feel into silence until Stiles couldn’t take it any longer. “Why do you hate me? Well hate isn’t really the right word because you’re not really hostile to me anymore. Why is it you can barely tolerate me?”

“I don’t barely tolerate you.”

“Yes you do. You’re always really standoffish around me and we don’t really talk. Not that we used to talk before unless it was about whatever was trying to murder us at the time. I just… I wasn’t sure whether I should include you in the candy cane thing or not because we’re not really friends and I thought it might be weird. But then I ended up doing it anyways and I’m still not sure it was a good idea because you’re you and I’m me and-”

“Stiles.”

“Right I’m rambling. I should probably go before I say something even more embarrassing. I’m just going to…”

“Sit down. I want to show you something.” Stiles slowly sat back down and waited patiently for Derek to return with a lidless box in his hands. “I had trouble finding the one you left on Thursday. I probably would have missed it if I hadn’t have dropped my keys.”

“You kept them all?”

“Yes.”

“Why? You know you’re supposed to eat them right?”

Derek rolled his eyes fondly at Stiles. “I’m aware. I don’t hate you or barely tolerate you. I’ve been trying to keep my distance because you’re young and-”

“Technically I’m eighteen so I’m considered an adult now in the state of California. Just thought I’d throw that out there and for the record most of the pack is younger than I am.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Not really no. It’s kind of a by-product of my ADHD coupled with my eccentric personally.”

“Stiles.”

“What?”

“Shut up.” Derek leaned forward and kissed Stiles right on the lips then pulled away.

“Oh… Oh! You like me.”

“Yes.”

“Like like me like me.”

“Yes.”

“You know if we eat some of these the peppermint flavor would probably make kissing more interesting because there will be more kissing. A lot more kissing. All the kissing will be had.”

* * *

 

Derek spent the next Saturday searching for his daily candy cane but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to find it anywhere. The pack was supposed to arrive any minute now and Derek was sure Stiles would mock him endlessly if he didn’t find it before then. The rest of the pack still hadn’t figured out Stiles was the one leaving the candy canes, but Stiles would still find a way to mock him without the others finding out. Derek was just about to give up when the door to his apartment slid open to reveal Stiles.

A grin was stretched across his face and his cheeks were dusted a rosy pink color because of the cold wind that had hit him on the walk from his car to the building. His bright red coat was wrapped tightly around him just like the black scarf around his neck. His usual mess of hair was hidden beneath a beanie and his hands were covered in a pair of fluffy gloves. In his hands was a plastic candy cane tube filled with Hersey’s Kisses.

“Looking for this?” The grin on Stiles’s face somehow managed to get wider as he watched Derek quickly cross the loft. “Someone’s excited.”

“I thought I wasn’t going to find it in time.”

“You spent all morning looking for it?”

“No…”

“That’s so cute.”

“Shut up.”

“I think it’s adorable! You were trying so hard to find it.”

“Only because I knew you would make fun of me if I didn’t find it.”

“I wouldn’t make fun of you.” Stiles wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s neck so they were pulled closer together. “I would just… point out your lack of detective skills.”

“That’s all?”

“Such sass.”

“Coming from the King of Sarcasm.”

“You enjoy my sarcasm. You find it refreshing.”

“Refreshing isn’t the word I would use.”

“Well I guess I can just keep my Kisses than.” Stiles pulled back the hand that held the plastic candy cane in it. “You know I think my dad would be much more appreciative of this. He’s been doing so well with his diet recently.”

“Hand over the candy cane.”

“I knew you couldn’t resist my Kisses.”

“You’re a dork.”

“A dork with your daily candy cane. Now pucker up toots.”

“Don’t ever call me toots again.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and tucked the candy cane into Derek’s jeans. “Is that a candy cane in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.”

“Stiles!”

“You know I’d shut up if you’d just kiss me already. It’s really quite simple.” Derek’s lips moved surely over Stiles’s until the sound of the pack arriving met his ears and he pulled back. “Minty.”


End file.
